WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque participated in the WrestleMania 41 post-show on Saturday, where he discussed various topics, including when he began recognizing Jey Uso as a potential world champion.
Triple H said, “It’s a process, it’s not a moment, I don’t think, ever. Might be a moment where we were all like, something’s happening here, but it’s usually not a particular moment because it’s things over time. I think everybody saw something different in Jey over the last couple of years in that Bloodline story and the way he handled himself and the emotion, but I think a lot of people thought it was this cast of characters making this great ensemble piece that worked and that when he goes off on his own, it’s gonna be different, doesn’t have all these other people to play off of, doesn’t have this story. Then he goes out there and there is a different connection with people. It’s funny because sometimes I see people talk about Jey and they are like, the yeet guy is doing his yeet thing. What he’s doing is he sees something that is truly him, that resonated with people and caught on.”
On the creative process for WrestleMania 41 Night One:
“It’s impossible to tell anybody the process because there are so many cogs in it. As you begin to put this event together, as the event begins to grow, as it becomes bigger, as it gets closer, every little thing that happens changes some piece of it. So it’s like having a giant set of dominos, you set it all up, and if one falls, a lot of them go down, and you begin to have to change things and tweak things around. This build was also a lot longer, so it was a different kind of build. I often think of individual matches like individual songs. For anybody who downloads, it’s maybe a different thing, but for anybody who grew up with vinyls, or cassette or even a CD era, the individual songs are great, but you saw so many bands talk over the years about the album, the album tells a story. All these songs, each individual match, comes together to make an album. So it’s a lot of factors that go into making that album.”
On what WWE’s intent is with their acquisition of AAA:
“The intent is to grow it, to grow lucha libre, to as you mentioned, it has such a cultural impact. South America, Central America, all through Mexico. Then you come into the United States, and I don’t know if anyone saw the New York Times article where they talked about the power of lucha libre and what it means. Especially in the markets in the U.S. like Los Angeles and places like that, Southern California. The intent is to grow. The intent is to grow that brand. NXT started out as this, and over time, became something massive, when done right. Shawn Michaels mentioned it last night. When you look at WrestleMania now, most of it came directly out of NXT, a large percentage of it. That’s the success of it. And I think Mexico, I think AAA, I think lucha libre, opens up the doors for those athletes as well, to not only grow, but to be the biggest they can be.”
You can check out Triple H’s comments in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
